Tolkien News

Sarehole Mill Looked Sad for Hobbit Birthday

Posted by on October 1, 2012 at 10:12 am

People visiting Sarehole Mill for The Hobbit‘s birthday were disappointed to find that the scenic sight has, for the time being, disappeared.

The mill, which inspired The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit is lost under a covering of scaffold and plastic sheeting, whilst the mill pond has been drained and the half the  car park is fenced off and covered with building materials.  The building, which is owned by the Birmingham Museum Trust, will be closed for renovations from October to April, when it will reopen with a new Tolkien gallery and a bakery to sell milled bread. £300,000 has been raised to complete the project.

Chris Rice,Head of Heritage Services, apologised to visitors, but told the Sunday Mercury that the building work was necessary and that it had to be done at this time to conserve the wildlife in the pond.

“We are refurbishing the mill and mill pond. The scaffolding is sheeted because earlier this year sadly we were targeted by metal thieves who stole led from the site, so we are doing everything we can to maximise security.

“We thought about closing it, but we get so many visitors, including some from overseas, and we didn’t want to stop them from visiting the Sarehole Mill.

“We have waived the entrance fee while the work is ongoing. In the next couple of months we are planning to run behind the scenes tours.”

I must say,  I’m delighted to hear they’ve raised the money to restore the mill and I look forward to a visit in the spring!

Picture by Oosoom [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

 

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Author: Evie was introduced to Tolkien's work by her boyfriend, over a beer in the Eagle and Child pub in Oxford. She went home, read the books and, a while later, married her boyfriend. She has only recently discovered fandom, after years of eye-rolling by her husband and children, and is delighted to find it warm and welcoming and not-at-all weird. As well as tracking down bits of news and sharing them with others, she leads ponies for Riding for the Disabled and loves the cinema and theatre and her wildlife garden.